Yeah, as much as I am inclined toward urbanism, I do recognize this sentiment. Of course it's only convenient given certain preconditions, like owning a car. And there can totally be paths and parks and green space in urban areas, but it takes a serious commitment to planning for quality of life that not all cities have.

My first experience spending more than an hour with people from the suburbs came when I was seventeen and I got trapped in an elevator at band camp with a bunch of kids from Orange County. The shit who was responsible for getting us stuck (he wanted to see what would happen if he pried the doors open) started crying a few hours in after the other three from his school made him feel like shit for getting us trapped. He was rocking back and forth at one point repeating that his parents wouldn't even care if he died in that elevator and then they all awkwardly apologized to him. I thought they were a really remarkable fucking crowd of people.

Admittedly, I haven't lived in wealthy suburbs out here, but my impression is that parking and traffic are problems for everyone. And I don't mean commute traffic, I mean the long lines of cars I see waiting to exit the freeways near malls on the weekends, and the fact that there can be so many parking lots and yet parking is still a problem in places you might actually want to go.

16: I tend to think the opposite. You could probably count the fatal bear attacks in your state this decade on one hand. I go out of my way to spend time places I might see a bear but every time I'm at work and have to go to our junkie park I can't wait to get out of that shithole.

Denver is 100% on the plains, unless there's some weirdness on the city limits technically reaching the mountains. If you could post photos in comments, and I'm glad you can't, I'd post one of the pictures I took last year from the train heading west that makes it pretty clear there's no mountains where the city is. You can see the mountains, though, and I guess there are some housing developments going up in the foothills.

14: If that's what you want out of life, you probably can't get it in a big city. I don't really get why it's such a big deal for people, though. I'm not trying to pretend to be tough -- I don't feel at all at risk from street crime where I live or really anywhere around here. But seeing drunks and junkies certainly happens, it just doesn't ruin my day.

Well, right. There aren't drunks and junkies in all the parks all the time, you just can't arrange your life in a big city to be absolutely certain that you're never going to see someone who's in trouble.

Well, yeah. To the extent there are gangs in NYC (less than in other big cities?), they're not wearing ID badges on lanyards, or anything else similarly obvious. I mean, there are teenagers in the parks I go to, and I suppose some of them could be gang members, but while they're playing ball or barbecuing, how would I know?

On the general point, yeah, we're supposed to hate suburbs, and it's easy to do, because they're a compromise option for many people between the joys of rural and urban living, and all compromises are hatable, but as a compromise, they're really not bad. You get some land and some peace and quiet, some stuff to do very close by, and lots of stuff to do not too far away. And for the most part you don't have to worry about physical safety, which is a very big deal to a lot of people (myself included).

Where are you? For reasons I'm not sure I can explain, I find a place like Highlands Ranch horrid, and a place like Lafeyette acceptable (we even house-shopped there) although the differences, at least to an outsider, are subtle at best. I never made it to Littleton, which might be the echt rich burb out there.

(On the point of Denver burbs being well-planned: hmm. The Denver metro area is sprawly as hell, so there's no way the whole area was well-planned, but individual towns have great amenities, lots of open space and trails, and are generally well-governed.)

And for the most part you don't have to worry about physical safety, which is a very big deal to a lot of people (myself included).

We live at a time of historically low crime rates. It's not that there aren't dangerous areas, but anyone making a systematic choice between city and suburb (as opposed to very particular dangerous city neighborhood) on the basis of physical safety is an idiot.

Googling sites that catalogue London gangs, there are (supposedly) gangs operating in this immediate area, and a couple slightly further east classed as 'high harm' gangs, but it's going to be groups of teens and twenty somethings selling drugs and preying on each other. From my point of view, as a 40-something with a kid, they might as well be invisible.

I still think they're idiots. That is, I don't believe that the baseline crime risk is actually noticeably different city to suburb, if you peel out identifiable genuinely dangerous city neighborhoods (and of course there are those in the suburbs too -- no fair comparing a few picked suburbs to the nastiest part of the city of your choice).

What's different is the visuals that make you think about crime: seeing the occasional drunk on a park bench and so on. Not the actual risk of being victimized.

More of 40: That is, I'm a completely physically unintimidating woman -- there's no reason for me to be less likely a crime victim than anyone else on the planet. I'm safer than some people because I'm also never going to start a physical conflict with anyone (barring the occasional "I'm walking here" car-slap, but only on crowded streets in the daytime), but anyplace I'm safe, anyone else should be safe.

And I'm forty years of living in NYC, not being careful (like, there's a fair amount of late night on public transportation. I take cabs home if I've been drinking late now that I'm an employed adult, but that's mostly laziness/luxury rather than caution), and I've never been the victim of a crime that involved physically interacting with me. (My apartment was burgled once, but that was in a neighborhood that did, at the time, count as genuinely dangerous, and that a cautious person would have avoided.)

And I haven't been unusually lucky. Trying to think of people I know where I can come up with 'victim of street crime' stories, I'm going back to the early eighties. Late eighties if you count the time a high school kid grabbed my sister's hat (she took it back from him). I'm not saying there aren't stories I'm forgetting, but not a lot.

Right. The early eighties story was a genuinely big deal -- a friend of my father's was shot during a mugging (he was fine, but was mugged and shot), but that's one story, from over thirty years ago, when crime rates were very, very different.

48: You're reading my mind. When I think about raising kids in the city, I am completely comforted to know that there are sober people in yellow cars ready to drive them home at any hour of the day or night.

(I'm lying on the street crime. I was thinking 'friends'. Broadening it out to acquaintances, I've got two more stories that had slipped my mind. Still no injuries or important property loss, but in-person theft both in the last twenty years.)

Imaging that ajay is a Clockwork Orange-style ultraviolence hooligan trying to decide whether it's worth emigrating to NYC based on watching The Warriors is making my day.

Cities are wonderful. I was raised in the rural end of the suburbs (sort of--lived on a not-very-developed mountain near to the city) and it was isolating as all fuck. I still go back to my childhood home a lot and having over an acre of land is nice, but it's not a community.

What LB has been saying. Cities aren't single entities when it comes to crime. Baltimore has about as scary a reputation as US cities get, but it's really a matter of specific dangerous neighborhoods, otherwise it's pretty normal. Of course, the reasons those neighborhoods are dangerous are deeply racist and fucked up, but that's a matter for another thread.

The only "physically menaced by a stranger" encounter I've had in my life took place in exquisitely suburban Orange County.

It occurs to me that I'm kind of a cliche. Grew up in suburban Orange County and have been avoiding suburbs like the plague ever since.

Sure, now cities are safe. When I was a kid in the 80s Oakland was capable of menace on its day. Of course I grew up thinking the suburbs were all Blue Velvety anyway and the only black men in Contra Costa work at gas stations.

About big cities and crime, a Lee Atwater quote is relevant here. No offense, gswift, I realize it's literally your job to watch out for junkies, but a lot of people are "concerned" about "crime" with less legitimate reason than you.

As for suburban life, it sounds nice when you put it like in the OP, my biggest complaint about my home is the lack of space. (For context, it's a rowhouse in DC, about a mile from Union Station.) I replaced my desktop computer with a laptop and a regular guest bed with a wall bed, all the space under our bed and our couches is occupied, all the big projects we've done in our house were intended to get more storage space, and it's not enough. A garage and an attic would be a dream. But as for the convenience of suburban life, it really relies on a car for the household. And realistically it relies on a car for each adult in the household, doesn't it? My wife and I are probably going to get a car in a year or two to get our daughter around, but just one. I can't imagine needing or wanting two cars while we're in our current house.

The main consistent defect of life in these suburbs is almost certainly the huge soul-draining commutes, which so many avoid examining when considering life in the suburbs. (Not to say commutes are necessarily long, of course, but on average.)

And what does it mean, he asked rhetorically, when people's risk tolerance is effectively zero for violent crime, but they define their frame of risk excluding not just vehicular injury but relationship violence, suicide, gun accidents...

I know many people who were shot, but none (except for veterans) were shot by anybody but themselves. Intentionally, accidentally, and "good enough for the insurance company". I think the total is eight or so. It really is remarkable, but that's more rural than suburban.

Two of the people I know who shot themselves are alive. They shot themselves in the foot with pistols. They weren't trying to get out of anything. I assume they were playing quick draw and pulled the trigger too soon.

You know, there are plenty of small towns where there is significant gang activity and crime and drunk driving! At least my cost of living is very low. (For the record, I'm describing Sad Town where I work slightly more than Heebieville.)

To Ogged, our three families we're visiting are in Aurora, Centennial, and Littleton. On commutes, all three mothers are SAHMs. Of the fathers, one works from home but travels constantly, one owns his own tech company and has nearby office space, and one has a commute of maybe 30-45 min? But then again, so do I.

Its really the sitting at a red light for 8 minutes at some 16 lane road interchange that drives me nuts. To get to a store that if i could have walked like a crow flies, i could have walked to in 5 minutes.

78. AIMHSHB, my dad told me that when he was 20-something before WWII he reckoned he was OK to drive as long as he only saw one of each oncoming vehicle. That was more or less the standard of the time.

My dad's sister's kids talk about how when traveling they would mix drinks and pass them up front to the parent who was driving. They couldn't have kept one parent as a sober driver if they'd wanted to (which they didn't) because they were too many for one car.

"Suburbs are not that bad. Do kids who live in them really find them as boring as kids used to in the 80s or whatever? They have got the internet now."

I dunno, i had IRC and AOL chat when I was growing up and i still thought the suburbs sucked (more of living far enough outside a smallish town that while the town wasn't really typically suburban, it would have taken most of the evening to bike to a friends and then bike home)

This is not exactly scientific, but on a quick google, I found violent crime stats for Lincoln Park, which is one of the nicest areas of Chicago, and there were 26 instances from June 11-July 11 of this year. In all of 2014, in my suburb, there were zero. (I'm not deliberately cherry-picking; that's what I found stats for).

"Cities are great but they can be expensive. They also can be tough for having kids because they are so expensive."
But this isn't intrinsic to cities! only to pre-existing cities in places where you aren't allowed to build any more city! OTOH, it seems like a big SUV and the space to park it would be handy with a kid.

I never know quite how to describe where we live. It's a suburb in that you can see into the city across the river and get there in minutes by car/bike/foot. There are fewer than 20,000 people in the town, but it's considered urban. We don't have suburban scourge of deer, at least in the flats where I live. I usually default to "town" here, but I'm not sure how accurate that is either.

Anyway, I close on the new house this afternoon. This day a year ago is when I publicly announced Lee would be moving out. It's been an extremely grueling year, but things should get so much better from here and even the bad parts have been better than they would be if we were still together.

My lawn is tiny and full of weeds and an awesome stump. I'll have no problem mowing it myself, especially because I let Nia talk me into the nicer Fiskars push-powered mower. And there's enough space in the paved area between our house and the next that Selah's getting a street hockey set for her birthday next week so she and the other little kids in the neighborhood can play behind the fence rather than on the sidewalk. The girl next door (black family, as are the two directly across the street) was in Nia's class last year and will be again next year, so the three girls have made plans to walk to school together.

Lee is very nervous about how unsafe it might be compared to the wealthier and almost all-white neighborhood we've been in, but I'm really not worried at all. Even if people were going to be doing particularly unsafe and stupid things, they probably wouldn't want to do them a block from the county jail anyway. I'll be careful and I'm going to buy a lockable shed to keep bikes and the lawnmower in, but I feel no alarm whatsoever.

I don't think population weighting is sufficient. You need to look at the number of waking hours people spend there. Pittsburgh's bedroom communities have very low violent crime rates compared to the city or the suburbs that have actual jobs/shopping/events in them. If there's no place for people to gather, there's less opportunity for violence.

Without reading the thread, I'll just note that IME the "community" that you get in such suburbs is heavily cohort-driven. That is, when the neighborhood is new, a bunch of young families move in and the kids grow up together and everyone is close. Then the kids leave and those families drift off and are replaced. But if, at any point, you're living there without kids of the relevant age, you're pretty isolated (unless you're outgoing I suppose; I mean, I don't think it's ostracization). This is based on my dad's neighborhood, where we moved 25 years ago this summer, and a local tony suburb, complete with (older) pool & clubhouse, where I've known 2 generations living there.

You don't need urban design to get a bunch of similar people with a lot in common to cohere.

There's a slightly weird affect in cities that even at the same crime rate *per person* it's inevitably much higher *per square mile*. So even though where I lived in New York was quite safe, around once a year someone was shot within two blocks of my house. It's not totally crazy for that to feel like a "near miss" in a scary way.

I was recently at a gathering where a concealed carry permit holder was ranting about how in Maryland you need to show cause why you need a CCW permit. His argument was "look around, the world is dangerous." He failed to convince me. I'm pro CCW permitting, but many of the people who do carry concealed are doing so out of a horribly inaccurate threat assessment.

Population is a little over 30,000. Looks like Lincoln Park is about twice that. I understand that people in Lincoln Park are not walking around scared, nor should they be, but there's a real difference between even nice urban neighborhoods and the kinds of suburbs Heebie is talking about.

We have a local park and playground within a 2 minute walk, and most of the time the gangbangers hang out on only one side of the park and don't bother white people. The junkies mostly use in their cars or at home, and the homeless guys aren't too harrassing. It's our own little urban arcadia, rus in urbe.

You get some land and some peace and quiet, some stuff to do very close by, and lots of stuff to do not too far away.

I have no idea what ogged could possibly mean by "very close by" here. Almost by definition suburbs offer nothing to do very close by unless you include getting into a car and driving 5-10 minutes. 1/4 mile is a normal "walking distance"; you can stretch that to 1/2 mile for a desirable destination*. Nowadays 1/4 acre lots are considered small, call them 100' square. If your house is more than 13 houses away from "stuff to do", it's no longer walking distance, except as an excursion.

And don't try to suggest that it's more pleasant walking suburban streets; they've done the studies, and people are much more willing to walk a given distance in an urban environment, because there's much more to look at. 1/4 mile in the suburbs means 26 roughly identical houses, 1.5 acres of mown lawn, and a couple dozen trees; the same walk in a city means 75 or more houses, generally with more variety, and/or storefronts, other pedestrians, probably a pocket park, etc.

Where my dad lives--a bog-standard 1960s suburb--literally the only destination within 2 miles in any direction is the elementary school. We were there last week, and the kids came back because they couldn't even find any freaking Pokemon Go.

*that is, 1/4 mile to a store is no big deal; 1/2 mile to a nice, amenity-filled park is fine as well. You generally wouldn't walk 1/2 mile to a small park with a tot lot in it, unless you just wanted to get the hell out of the house (or were walking explicitly for exercise)

112: My friend who grew up on this street says that our little park was full of needles when he was a kid, but I'm not sure I've seen 5 in 15 years here. What's remarkable about that is that, as I've mentioned, we used to have a dealer next door, and exchanges certainly happened in the park. But I guess not usage (actually, the clearest sign of a purchaser was a car with WVa plates).

123.last: Yes, it's wonderful! Also I put our old broken mower in the garbage and then later saw (next town over, on the way to see my brother when we ran across Mara's siblings) it for sale out of someone's garage, not looking particularly fixed. That amused me.

Looks to me like ogged's suburb probably suffers from ~2 driving deaths per year vs. ~1 for Lincoln Park*, for a rate about 3.5X higher. But at least they're not hearing about a guy who heard about someone on the other block who got mugged.

if the suburbs are tolerable at all, driving everywhere is the baseline assumption.

That's where I dispute "very close". Getting kids under age 7 into car seats is a PITA. Parking is a PITA. 1/4 mile is what I can walk in 5 minutes. In 5 minutes, door-to-door, a car in suburbia is not going more than 2 miles. So now "very close" is I guess a 10 minute door-to-door drive? In 10 minutes I can bike to a 500 acre park, a world class dinosaur museum, and literally countless amenities.

When AB's mom was moving here from Frederick, MD, and generally an adulthood in the suburbs, she would apartment hunt in areas that we identified as way too far away, because they were "only" 15 minutes from our house by car. But for us, that's a long, unpleasant trip, not a trifle. It's the whole suburban mindset. And there's no objective standard by which a 15 minute drive, in urban traffic, is preferable to a 5 minute walk (OK, rain excepted, but I'm not advocating car-free life, just life where a car isn't a prerequisite for going literally anywhere). It's more dangerous, it's more aggravating, it's less healthy. And hell, with phones these days, you don't even get the "I get to listen to my music" benefit.

BTW, I should acknowledge here that the sort of thing H-G is describing, with the trails and such, is certainly pleasant (at least if the trails are well-designed; I've been places where they're just gravel paths on flat land in the sun); I'm not saying that suburban life has no benefits. I'm just saying that so many arguments for the suburbs rely entirely on unfounded assumptions.

I mean, if AB & I lived in a suburb, additional vehicle cost alone would be about $9k a year; IMO that's a steep deficit to make up.

I will say having a second kid move in has made clear the appeal of a home with a yard you can send children to. But if I left the city I wouldn't be able to get my heroin at my local park. (In all seriousness as folks are mentioning I'd be way more terrified about the kids-as-teens driving drunk if we were in suburbs than I would be about anything they could get into here.) True Crime Story: my parents lived in the South Bronx in the 70s and their apartment got burgled but the thief removed the James Taylor record from their record player (which he took) and left it on the kitchen counter.

123: Eh, I don't mind driving in a rural area. It's just the way things are, and if you don't mind travel time or rural life in general, it's fine. Personally I don't mind it when I'm visiting, and rural life wasn't for me but driving wasn't why. It's just driving in suburbs or cities that's miserable. Stop and go traffic, fighting or paying for parking spaces, shoveling snow off the street to clear a parking space in the winter and the various local norms that go with that (instead of just shoveling places where people walk, which is more reasonable), dodging double parkers, navigating unfamiliar roads while in traffic...

As I said, we're expecting to get a car in a year or two, because chances are slim that Atossa will go to a school within walking distance of us or even within easy reach of public transportation. (Our second choice of school is walkable/busable, but I don't want to plan on getting exactly our second choice.) If we do, I almost think it would make sense to just drop Atossa off at school, return the car home afterwards, and continue biking or busing to work like we are now.

And I have to go back to early 80s too to think of physically violent crimes perpetrated on people I know but plenty of purse snatching etc. since then. Not in last 10 years though. And even in the early 80s it was really hard to get murdered. Most people didn't.

1/4 mile is a normal "walking distance"; you can stretch that to 1/2 mile for a desirable destination

That's an extremely constraining definition of "walkable" - I suppose maybe if you live somewhere with a tremendously unpleasant climate, or you're having to carry kids? The park I think of as "really nearby" is (Google Maps tells me) half a mile walking distance from my front door, as is the train station.

FB notifications just reminded me of something: they'll tell me when a friend is attending an event "near me", and it always makes me think of something within, at most, that 10 minute biking radius. But, more often than not, they basically just mean "in the city". But that's the suburban definition of "nearby", isn't it? If I can drive there in ~20 minutes, it's close. Nope.

And I should note here that I like driving; I'm not a car-hater at all. I put almost 20k/year on my pre-AB car, most of it as fast as practical. But traffic? Driving 3 miles for a quart of milk? Kill me.

Almost by definition suburbs offer nothing to do very close by unless you include getting into a car and driving 5-10 minutes.

TBALB, suburbs don't inherently have to be that way. In my study abroad in college my homestay location was 40 minutes out of Kyoto by train, the definition of suburban, but the houses were all two-story and there were all sorts of attractions walkably nearby.

My radius of errand-running is about a mile: there's sort of a neighborhood change at around that distance, where there aren't a lot of stores right outside that radius. Further than that I think of as purposefully 'taking a walk'. On the other hand, I'm a healthy adult: I could see the narrower definition as what it takes for 'walkability' including small children and people who are frail for whatever reason.

138, 139: This is standard urban planning stuff. And, as I say, a transit stop is the kind of destination for which 1/2 mile is standard.

Actually, in transit circles, they tell you that bus stops have a 1/4 miles radius, rail stops 1/2 mile.

Also, you have to bear in mind varying abilities: AB will walk most of a mile each way to get to the post office, but her mom (overweight with bad knees & feet) finds the 1/8 mile from our house to the kids' bus stop a bit much.

145, 146: And yeah, the nicer the conditions, the greater the radius, which was part of my point to start with. There's a TJ's on the other side of my neighborhood, probably not much farther than the post office (or my barber that I always walk or bike to), but on the other side of some unpleasant conditions (concrete, no shade, no storefronts), and I think I've never once walked there.

The quarter mile is less a hard limit, and more of a "everyone within this range would walk without a second thought." There's no perceived inconvenience at that distance.

If the PSAs are to be believed, the major crime to watch out for here is people snatching iphones and tablets from folks who are walking down the street oblivious to everything around them because they're busy texting.

Can't hang out as I'm prepping for bear country but Ogged's right. Of course there's some regional variations but getting into the suburbs to avoid crime isn't always some made up thing and liberals can get a little blind to these issues. Remember that article Ogged linked that talking about certain Chicago neighborhoods and house prices? He was using neighborhoods like Chatham as an example of whites refusing to live around black people with 0 mention of that neighborhood having a ton of shootings. I've linked it before, but this account of an otherwise liberal guy giving up on Baltimore is a good read. Granted it's a bit of an extreme case but around here I could take you all on tours of neighborhoods where people are paying a premium for a smaller house because of the proximity to downtown but are also being subjected to a higher rate of property crimes and violent crime (that's not even the "junkie park") because of the proximity to the high drug use areas. Lots of those residents probably accept the trade off, but I wouldn't. I'm fine with a 20 minute commute and a lower price on a house where I flat out don't see that kind of shit at all.

141, 144: Yeah, I think we're all talking about US-style, postwar suburbs. Streetcar suburbs are frequently walkable (at least big chunks of them), and have some physical resemblance to modern suburbia. But the scale is different.

I don't have any problem with people living where they want. I just get a little resentful when they work in the city but don't pay any taxes there and then vote for people who consider the highways that run the suburbs to be in the public interest and the bus that runs by my house is apparently not worth a (much smaller) subsidy.

Anyway, if they go back home and report about the city being full of crazy people who slap their cars, I hope they mention that the person who slapped their car was crossing the street legally and, this time, didn't have keys in his hand.

I was about to say something like 138 too. I regularly walk about a mile to a grocery store I like and it's not really something that registers as a serious distance to me.* Even the closer grocery store is a half mile (or almost) and it barely feels like I'm going anywhere. A quarter of a mile is just a bit over a (long) block - it's close to the kind of distance where I'd be debating whether or not to go to the trouble of putting on a coat if it wasn't really really cold out.

I suspect it could feel longer to me if it was in the middle of a suburb though. An awful lot of suburbs either have inefficient ones or just none at all, which makes walking anything more than a few houses over an actual chore whereas if you're in a city once you know where you're going you don't really even need to think about what you're doing - you just kind of point your feet in that direction and listen to music or think about what you're planning to do when you get there or whatever.

*Roughly "far enough that if I'm running short on time I'll use my bike but short enough that I feel a bit silly getting on my bike to go there".

I occasionally think of myself as living in a suburban situation because I live in a one-family house on a street of one- and two-family houses. Apparently anything less than "solid wall of 5+ story buildings" doesn't quite feel like "city" to me, even with a population density of 20,000 per square mile and a half-mile walk to a subway stop.

Then I have some occasion to actually go out into the real suburbs and it helps me recalibrate for a minute.

I was actually surprised when I put it into google maps to check the distance. If it's a straight walk over basically flat terrain and you don't have to spend a lot of time pausing at intersections or something it really isn't that far for anyone without constraints on their mobility. Even if it was a more complicated walk though I don't think it would be a very serious distance around where I live at least.

The trick is just to have a bag over your shoulder rather than trying to carry lots of shopping bags and, on days when you buy a bunch of stuff, to practice tying shopping bags to the straps of your bag to carry what doesn't fit in your messenger bag/backpack/whatever (the key is to balance them on both sides).

When I was younger I occasionally did big shopping trips (dinner shopping for the co-op) using a webbing strap intended to carry a pair of rollerblades - big velcro'd loop on each end, could easily carry three or four plastic grocery bags on each side, and have the whole thing across my shoulders.

159: Not willfully blind or anything, but things like conversations I've had with people from say D.C. who say they and at least half their acquaintances have been mugged in the last five or ten years. I could not probably talk to every person in my neighborhood and not find a single person who's ever been robbed in that way.

154: Agreed. I think suburbs would be a lot nicer if they were built on grids instead of culs-de-sac. Ie like some of the less central Chicago neighborhoods. Driving is pretty convenient there, because traffic doesn't get funneled down into 1 or 2 huge arteries; you can just drive straight to where you need to go. It helps that things are significantly closer (no huge green space to drive past).

Does anyone here use a skateboard? I had a roomate who used a longboard to get around and I'm thinking of getting one to walk my dog.

This isn't about my preferences; shit, I'd probably live in Lincoln Park if I could afford it and it worked for my wife's commute, but I'm just saying that there's a real difference in terms of crime in even very nice urban neighborhoods and the suburbs, and that matters to a lot of people, and it's not crazy that it matters to them.

I'm just saying that there's a real difference in terms of crime in even very nice urban neighborhoods and the suburbs, and that matters to a lot of people, and it's not crazy that it matters to them.

And it really is kind of crazy. Like, crime isn't random, most of it happens between acquaintances. So looking at the crime rate includes a lot of crime that's not going to happen to you, even if it happens in your neighborhood. And the difference between super low crime rates and even lower crime rates may be statistically identifiable, but it's loony to give up anything at all for it unless the higher crime rate is a problem in itself, rather than just higher than the rate someplace else.

91: it's very hard to get by without a car in Texas. It's not too hard to live somewhere walkable, though. Our house is unusually walkable - library, activity center, town square, river, grocery store. But the town is mostly not.

People's feelings about driving vary a lot, just like they do with crime*. And the risks of driving also depend a lot on factors that aren't really captured by the raw numbers. Are you driving from a leafy suburb to a rush-hour expressway? You're just very unlikely to die doing that, even if you do get into an accident. I can get to the grocery store and never be on a road with a speed limit over 35. Not likely to kill me. And the other kinds of driving (road trip, trip to Ikea) are done by people in cities, too.

* Some people see strangers as a constant threat, some people see them as background. Some people think of cars as flying hunks of metal death, some people see them as extensions of their living room. These are not feelings very amenable to statistical persuasion.

I've now been around here long enough and know so many people, that I usually run into someone I know whenever I go out. Because of the fact that when I'm under stress I tend to walk around while continually swearing under my breath, this is sometimes awkward.

173: it's a pity they seem to be such effective officers, because it would be terrific if they were the defendants in some sort of landmark police abuse case which became shorthand for a new legal safeguard or arrestee's right or something, like Miranda and Escobedo.
"Officer McNair, was the defendant advised of his right to Bonesteel-Coma protection?"

184: Right, but I can call them crazy for it if they're wrong about the meaningful actual danger to themselves. Seeing strangers makes you feel unsafe? I'm not going to argue with you about whether you have that feeling, but I'm not going to say it has a rational basis. Driving home over familiar roads when you've only had a few drinks? If that doesn't scare you, it doesn't. But it's plausibly pretty risky.

Avoiding car crashes has an illusion of control. Muggings seem out of your control unless you avoid risky areas. This is just one big thinking-fast-and-slow example where the heuristic that your gut advises does not lead to the actual safest situation.

I don't think it's an illusion. Obviously it's not totally under your control, but you can make your driving significantly more or less safe (don't drive drunk, don't drive tired, don't drive at night, don't drive in bad weather, avoid two-lane highways when you can, etc.) These stats are sorta-kinda on point.

You're just very unlikely to die doing that, even if you do get into an accident.

None of the Lincoln Park crimes you linked were homicides. Not right to compare aggression (that is, a robbery where there's threat but no injury) with death. A robbery is about the equivalent of squealing brakes and a near-miss by a few inches.

Nearly all of those things are much easier to minimize if you don't live in a distant suburb. Unless you can just say you aren't going to work in December and January because there isn't enough daylight.

Yeah, that's true. You're not going to get murdered in Lincoln Park, unless you deserve it. People were talking about road fatalities, and I responded, but I think it's all kinda beside the point, for the reason you note.

As for walkability, JRoth's numbers seem about right to me. I wouldn't think twice about walking a mile for the fun of it, but if I'm going shopping or otherwise running errands, speed and carrying stuff is relevant. A week's worth of groceries would be more than 20 pounds if I tried to get it all in one place.

About crime, 179 is right. I've long thought something like that to myself to explain my experiences living where I do, and since it's relevant, I looked up actual numbers. The numbers: nationwide violent crime rate excluding murders, 2014, 20.1 per thousand. Stranger violence rate excluding murders, 8.1. If you're looking at murders, the number is even lower - about a quarter of them are committed by strangers.

There was an article a while back saying, among other things, "Statistics suggest bicyclists who wear helmets get much fewer head injuries, but the same is likely true for motorists, so eh..." Well, maybe motorists should in fact wear helmets. Head injuries are horrible.

I worry my kid crosses against the light on foot at intersections on one-way streets with really steep hills where it is pretty impossible to see cars barreling up, e.g. Franklin, Gough.

Pretty much endorse all LB sentiments herein. There are a LOT of people living rough in SF, I don't feel it as dragging down my own quality of life except at the main library where sometimes it is excruciating to dive into the stacks bc there is a person in the vicinity without the means or will to bathe, but then I have an extremely acute sense of smell. Yes I daily see many we have collectively decided to consign to immiseration, untreated and/or self medicated mental and physical health issues. No it doesn't at all make the suburbs appealing to me. I'm pretty sure it sucks for those living rough.

I'm sorry, I'm going to pull the dead mother card on 182. My mom was permanently disabled (and eventually died) from a brain injury incurred in a crash that happened driving from her suburban house to the bowling alley a few miles away, not one whit less safe than the drive ogged makes every few days and declares completely benign for some reason. Christ, suburbanites really are completely blind to the dangers of driving.

Also, if you think no one is exceeding 30 mph on suburban streets, I don't even know what to say. The design of suburban streets--15' lanes, no street parking, 30'+ corner radii--induces speeds greater than that. The only way to drive typical suburban roads and stay under 30 mph is constant vigilance (or a bazillion stop signs that never get run; it's not literally impossible, but it's vanishingly rare).

Oh, and to 199, my mom was the best driver I've ever known. It was night, so she was being risky there. I'm sure that most suburbanites don't drive after dark, though, since their tolerance for physical danger is, literally, zero.

I've actually been t-boned by a guy who ran a light; luckily it was on the passenger side and I was alone. But it still seems to me that you can drive a lot and be pretty damn safe. When was your mom's accident? (Which is to say, what was standard safety equipment when it happened?)

Isn't it common knowledge at this point that most car accidents happen really close to home? People are more likely to be distracted by random things, have a false sense of security (ogged), not think much about whether what they're doing is risky, and so on when they're inside their own neighborhoods than in places they aren't used to or large highways or something.

I live in a city, technically, and one that's thought locally to be scary, but out West it feels like there's less of a distinction between city and suburb. We have a backyard, and there's not much in walking distance besides public parks and, well, a mountain with trails. If we were to move to "suburbs" the main difference would be that the houses are bigger and newer, and probably people would care more that my lawn has gone unevenly dormant in the heat.

So I wonder if people out West who choose rich suburban areas aren't thinking of the choice as between suburb and thriving urban center as much as wealthy suburb-looking-place and less wealthy suburb-looking-place.

I--maybe to an irrational extent --feel unsafe driving on the kinds of suburban streets described because there's always some chance that despite my best efforts *I* might hit someone; accidentaly mugging someone, meanwhile, not a big concern no matter how high the crime rate in the area.

241: As a kind of incompetent driver (I'm okay, but I don't do it nearly enough) there's a fairly dense kind of suburbia that scares me driving a little (call it 'Jersey'). A lot of roads with a 55 speed limit, but they're not highways, they're streets with occasional lights, and idiosyncratic merges into other roads. That kind of thing, when there's a lot of traffic, makes me nervous: too many decisions at high speed.

Real highways with exits and so on are fine, real city where you're driving 30 is fine (people are doing insane things, but slowly). But ad hoc, illogical, road layout at 55 upsets me.

For the record, the real highways with exits and so on in New Jersey scared the shit out of me. People would switch lanes for no reason at all and with no space at all. And for no fucking reason at all. Just had to be in between those two cars instead of ahead of them both or behind them both where there was tons of room.

My mom never learned to drive until she was close to thirty years old. She was a nervous driver from then until she lost her license for not being able to remember where she lived. She also had fewer crashes than anybody else in the family.

Theoretically speaking, just not being able to find your way home doesn't seem like you should be required to lose you license for. You should just have to have somebody else in the car who knows where you live.

You're demographically insulated from violent crime in a way you're not insulated from car accidents. I bet people you know have a lot more car injuries and close calls than violent crime injuries and close calls, by more than the factor of three that would suggest.

But the news is working in the opposite way here. You pretty much have to kill somebody or drive into a grocery store to make the news here with a car collision, but every time somebody tries to grab a purse (at least in my part of town) it makes the news.

Not germane but interesting: The death rate from motor vehicle injuries peaked in 1970 and has steadily decreased since. Poisoning leaped from 2.3 in 1990 to 10.6 in 2010 and continues to rise - ODs, maybe? Or changes in reporting? Homicide peaked in 1980 and is now back down to its 1950 level.

You're demographically insulated from violent crime in a way you're not insulated from car accidents. I bet people you know have a lot more car injuries and close calls than violent crime injuries and close calls, by more than the factor of three that would suggest.

In my general circle of acquaintances I can think of two people with serious injuries from accidents in which they were on a motorcycle, one person with injuries from an accident in which they were on a bike, and nobody with notable injuries from car accidents or violent crime. This suggests that (a) my circle of acquaintances is small and non-representative and (b) I'm almost certainly forgetting some incidents of car or violent crime and will be embarrassed when they do come to mind.

A lot of roads with a 55 speed limit, but they're not highways, they're streets with occasional lights, and idiosyncratic merges into other roads.

Oh yes. When I first moved to NJ from NYC, I was surprised to discover that I found driving in Jersey a lot more stressful. I guess I'm mostly used it by now; but, like most surburb-dwellers, I do underestimate (or refuse to dwell on) the dangers of driving.

I also thought I would really like NJ's no self-service gas stations quirk. Wrong. Turns out I'd rather get out of the car and pump my own gas than have to wait for a surly attendant to do it for me.

I live in a suburban town with a bus. I'd prefer to live closer in, but you can get around without a car. I work in 2 places. One is out in the suburbs without real public transportation. The traffic there can be terrible, but at the right time it's 15-20 minutes. When I go to my other offices downtown, it takes me an hour by public transit. I'd like to move closer in, but I don't know if we can afford it.